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We have had a lot of inquiries about the Sudden Denouement Short Story Contest. We received 129 submissions to the contest from all over the globe and the editors recently completed their first round of judging, choosing the top 24 stories. We are currently finishing a second round of judging and will begin publishing our favorites on the site as early as next week. We hope you enjoy them as much as we have!

I’m sorry for
all the pretty boys
I’ve loved
and left in
my epic wake.

Kindra M. Austin is a very sweary indie author and editor from mid-Michigan (you can find her books here). She’s also the co-founder of Blank Paper Press, a founding member of Indie Blu(e) Publishing, founder of publishing imprint, One for Sorrow, and a writer/managing editor at Blood into Ink, and Whisper and the Roar. Austin cut her poetry teeth in April, 2016, and joined the Sudden Denouement Literary Collective in 2017. You can find more of her foul mouth at poems and paragraphs.

[February]: He’s left you a wishbone on your pillow. You’re not sure what to do with it so you stick it between your ribs, feeling the sharp end shift with every move, scraping against the aorta. You hold your breath while sleeping and do not stir as the dreams pass by like headlights, colliding into the mist.

[May]: You pull out your teeth as not to hurt him anymore. He says your silence is ugly and suggests you keep your mouth open.

[August]: He draws surgical lines on your body.
“See? This is where I wish you loved me.”
Outside the operating theater you panic and run, not looking behind as he calls you back. The hallways are roaring. This is not your home.

[October]: The rains come and you’re picking up the pieces, trail of breadcrumbs leading you into desertion.

[December]: Your reflection glows back at you from the pond, clearer than ever without him peering over your shoulder. The wishbone flutters within you like a compass needle, pointing out your path. You find your own way of being lost.

The turnpike of west bowed to the city shimmer. An escort icon in ornamental estrangement contested the chivalry of desire. A whisper in a windless wood bellowed aloud to the deaf. Parking breaks bleeding the asphalt. The yellow strip chalked in brick red exhaust. A body adorned the open blank mileage of night – belly and breast down to our virgin eye. The opening cast of exposure decomposing the edible noir of suspicion. A sobbing wail claws at the silent twinkling nothing. A bent in bumper, fragmented shrapnel of glass and ribbon. Point south the rearview, and you see the cacti and coyotes roosting along edgy dunes sprouted to cast shadows. We wait out the buzzards, the hawks and wolves that are known to creep salaciously in cold blood. The lonesome fear reels inside like icy daggers, as the fantasizing man rolls the 140 pound dead weight idol into a sleeping bag.

Landscape scenic shot of the car and the bagged body, hauled stressfully. This is a slow and awkward struggle. The red hue blotching the lot – seizing natural color. Body in trunk, the frantic man, fumbles behind the wheel and chugs the murderous hunk from the scene. Residue of red sweats to black.

The cacti, the coyotes, the buzzards, and hawks all dash and bolt far from the wheels of this death machine. Into the eons, out beyond the pale who flops soundly with each jolt, rocking knots into the trunk. Like a meteor through the galaxy, the sputtering machine caught a set of red and blue sirens breaking sight behind. The vomit induced toxicity knuckled him to the gut, and he could hardly breathe. The hit and run captive homicide was slowly decaying inside polyester.

Hindsight dread deepened root around his spine, spearing bolts of electric wire to rattle bone. Quaking and immobile, the rubber rolling ankles trudged close. White knuckled, and shrink wrapped – plaid plagued soul of guilt. Hysterical hangover of helix vision, burning sight. The electrodes of the mindscape have abandoned all sake of morality. In troves the internal war upon self now underwater to smother. The clicking tongues spoke in a language not known to common dialogue. Deaf disposition now a suspicious entity on the side of highway 95 in the pith of night with a body in back.

A thump popped like tin, and the trunk creaked open. Alive, she’s alive. If skin could crawl, his anatomical dearest would be on auction. Scuffing dirt and gravel, he bolted to the back, flinging open the dinged trunk door. There wadded in the black human sized napkin of camping gear was the pink and red stillness of the breathless.

The longer he hovered the more he fantasized. The longer he fantasized, the more he became an adolescent boy again, reflecting on the first time he had seen an unclothed girl. The printed papers, the digital previews on 50” screens, the brothel on 5th street, and his routine call girls in shoddy motel rooms off of route 76. Appalled by the touch of his hand on her lukewarm cheek. But even more disgusted by the inhumanity he found within himself; he knew not the man he had become.

Mitch Green founded Rad Press Publishing in September of 2016. He is an avid artist in visual design and literature. Published in various literary journals and magazines: The Literary Yard. The Penmen Review. Vimfire Magazine – Mitch aims to seize the narrow line between all artistic mediums.

A few of his known poetic titles are: “Flesh Phoenix” “Monsters” “The Wolves Howled”.

Nitin Lalit Murali is a poet, flash fiction writer and essayist from Bangalore, India. He also enjoys reading literature of different genres and listening to jazz and neo-classical music. He started writing seven years ago and art has consumed him over the years. He blogs regularly at Fighting the Dying Light

his appreciation of nature, his love of the outdoors, his refusal to eat

with a spoon. All this came from his childhood asthma. He could ride

bareback and use a lasso.

You can’t blame Obama for wanting to be rich. What’s $50,000,000?

Change from the bottom of Oprah’s purse. After eight measly years

in the White House, he was bidding for a basketball team. Now, he is

worth nearly 800 million. And counting. Soon, he’ll be worth over

a billion. He has contempt for people who work for a living.

You turned your face away. We are deep into a period of misrule. The

Presidents are leaving power richer than when they come into office.

Clinton, Obama: trash, bless their hearts, but both now vacation on private yachts. They look down their noses at Trump. He’s beneath them. They

know real money. They can smell it.

I don’t want anyone to come down here trying to be kind. Trump teaches

us how to embody shrewd ignorant verve. Guts, not condescension. Not

the milk of human kindness. Too much of that and you’ll be ready for death.

He’s the kind of guy who’ll tell you you’re stupid, right to your face. Let’s face it: he reminds us of our mothers.

David Lohrey is from Memphis, where he grew up, and now lives in Tokyo, where he teaches and writes for local travel magazines. He graduated from UC Berkeley and then moved to LA where he lived for over 20 years.

Internationally, his poetry can be found in Otoliths, Stony Thursday Anthology, Sentinel Quarterly, and Tuck Magazine. In the US, recent poems have appeared in Poetry Circle, FRiGG, Obsidian, and Apogee Journal. His fiction can be read in Crack the Spine, Dodging the Rain, and Literally Stories.

David’s The Other Is Oneself, a study of 20th-century literature, was published in 2016, while his first collection of poetry, Machiavelli’s Backyard, was released in September 2017. He is a member of the Sudden Denouement Collective.

Devika Mathur, a poetess from India is a published poetess and is a lover of everything dark and surreal. Her work has been previously published in Sudden Denouement, Visual Verse, Dying dahlia review, two drops of ink, Madswirl, The rye whiskey review among various others. Find more of her musings at https://myvaliantsoulsblog.wordpress.com

A litany, a promise, a prayer.Run.
I run so fast, I will tear out of this sordid flesh, out of gilded skin and ivory bone.
I see myself: I am hollow, a pit of red.
I am the colour of blood, the colour of rage. The colour of flesh, the colour of shame.
I am shackled, by these strands of vein. They coil around me, tighter, tighter, I cannot breathe.
I see the cage, clearer than ever, this prison of flesh.
I see this promise, I hear its oath.Run, it whispers. If you run fast enough, you’ll break free.
And so, I do.

#

I run on fear, I run on fire.
I run for pain, the excruciating burn of desire. I burn for the exquisite absence of thought.
I run so fast, I leave behind my self, I will rust away until there is nothing left of me. Out of breath, out of life.
I want to lose myself, in the purest sense of the phrase, I want to forget, to be misplaced. I want to leave behind this life.
Bone to dust; blood can rust.

#

I see the cage, clearer than ever, this prison of red.
I hear these voices, I trust in their message.Run , they whisper. If you run fast enough, you’ll break free.
I know I can.
I know I can.

Shreya Vikram is a writer who prides herself on her ability to blur the lines between poetry and prose, intensity and elegance. You can read more of her work at The Midnight Ember.